


here's to the fools who dream

by kathillards



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Ninja Steel
Genre: Gen, Grid Theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 02:10:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11819037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: Everyone needs a friend to help them through the tough times. Growing up, the Ninja Steel rangers often found their best friends to be color-coded – and possibly figments of their imaginations.





	here's to the fools who dream

**Author's Note:**

> for those of you who don't know, grid theory is about the connection between all power rangers throughout the legacy and how it manifests in different ways. since the ninja steel rangers are an anniversary team, i thought they deserved something for it.
> 
> sorry there's no levi here but that's because his backstory is purposely shrouded in mystery and i can't write him till they tell us what it is. also very minor spoilers for episode 10 but mostly just backstory stuff that got revealed.

**red.**

He’s huddled in the janitor supply closet, knees pressed to his chest, shaking. The loud echo of footsteps and shouting slowly recedes from the room as the monsters head out, weapons thumping on the ground. Brody still doesn’t move. His feet feel frozen to the ground.

It takes five minutes for the door to open. He’d thought they would forget about him again, leave him to panic by himself in the closet, as they usually do when he hides. The monsters don’t care about him. Nobody cares about him.

He looks up, trying not to seem too terrified. Instead of a monster, a man stands in front of him: tall and decidedly human-looking, with dark skin and a warm smile, wearing a black-and-red suit that looks much like a ninja uniform.

Brody stares at him, heart hammering. “Who are you?”

The man kneels down and smiles at him. “Just a friend.” He extends one hand, large enough to dwarf both of Brody’s own. “You can call me Shane.”

“What are you doing here?” Brody asks, eyeing his hand suspiciously. The monsters don’t do handshakes But this man doesn’t look like a monster.

“Well,” Shane says, settling down cross-legged just outside the door. “You needed me. So I came.”

Brody’s eyes widen. “You’re here to rescue me? Did Aiden send you?”

Shane shakes his head, his smile turning a little sad. “No, I’m afraid not, Brody. I’m not really here. You’re going to have to rescue yourself.”

Brody looks down, lips twisting. “But I don’t know how to do that.” He pauses, glancing at the man suspiciously. “Are you just in my head?”

“Something like that.” Shane reaches out with a hand, palm up, offering it to him. Hesitantly, Brody places his hand over Shane’s. “I’d say I’m more in your heart. You’re a good kid, Brody. You’re gonna make it out of here some day, I promise.”

Brody frowns. “When?”

“I don’t know,” Shane says, wrapping his fingers around Brody’s hand and squeezing. “You’ll know when the time is right. The Morphin’ Grid doesn’t always tell us everything. But it’s told me this much: if you stay strong, and brave, and remember your father’s teachings, you’ll be all right.”

Brody stares at him, unwilling to believe. “Did you know my father?”

Shane lifts his other hand and presses it to his heart. “We’re all connected, Brody. All of us – you’ll see what I mean some day. I didn’t know your father but I know he would be proud of you for getting this far.”

Brody looks down and presses his face into his knees. Tears tickle his eyes but he can’t let them fall, he can’t. “It’s been a year,” he whispers into his legs. “Nobody’s coming for me.”

Shane squeezes his hand again, tighter, like he’s trying to pass a message through the touch. “Brody, I promise you, you’re gonna get out of here one day. And you’re gonna do it yourself, because you’re a ninja, and you’re stronger than you think you are.”

“I am?” he asks in a small voice.

“I know you are,” Shane says, giving his hand one last squeeze before he gets to his feet. “Look, the monsters are coming back. Why don’t you give them a taste of their own medicine?”

Brody’s brow furrows, but before he can ask what Shane means, he’s already disappearing, vanished like he was never even there. Just an illusion – a hallucination.

Still… Brody looks thoughtfully at the supplies in the janitor closet. A broom, a can of bleach, a blue liquid sitting in a bucket…

Maybe Shane was right. Maybe he will get out of here one day. All he has to do is remember how to be strong, and brave, like a ninja.

.

**blue.**

He goes to the Ribbon Tree every day for a week after the funeral. His father doesn’t protest, too caught up in himself and his grief and the company to notice. Preston watches the kids running past, flying kites, the teenagers making their own ribbons, the adults wandering through, laughing and chattering…

Emptiness cuts a hole deeper inside him every day. He sits with his back to the tree and avoids people’s looks when they see him there, wondering why he’s all alone.

He gets up only once, to go get ice cream from the cart that wheels by every day at midday on the dot. When he returns with his bubblegum cone, he finds a man he doesn’t recognize from around Summer Cove sitting in his place.

“This was my spot,” he says with a frown, stopping in front of the man. He looks halfway between young and old, parts of his face still a child but his eyes carrying a weight that seems familiar to Preston, somehow. His blue shirt is too big on him, his brown hair flops into his eyes.

“Sorry about that,” says the man, flashing him a grin. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

But when he stands up, he seems to shimmer and shake in the unsteady sunlight, and Preston steps back with a gasp.

“Are you real? Are you…” He looks around, lowers his voice. “Are you _magic_?”

The man smiles down at him. “Sort of,” he says, and Preston can’t help the way his heart jumps at the news. “My name is Justin. Do you by any chance know a boy named Prest-o Change-o? About your height, same hair color, just lost his mom, a bit of a sad kid, actually, though it’s not his fault, of course…”

Preston gapes. “ _I’m_ Prest-o,” he blurts out, then pauses and shakes his head. “No, wait, I’m… I’m just Preston. I can’t do magic.”

“Well, that’s just ridiculous.” Justin bends down to look him in the eye, very seriously. “You brought me here, didn’t you?”

Preston’s eyes widen into saucers. “I _did_?”

“How else would I be here?” Justin grins. He presses a hand to his heart and, without thinking, Preston mirrors the movement. “You’re as magical as you believe you are, Prest-o. Just remember that, okay? Magic is all in here.”

Preston looks down at where his hand is resting on his heart, feeling the erratic _thump-thump-thump_ of it underneath. “In my heart?”

“That’s where all magic lives.” Justin winks at him, then straightens up and turns to look at the Ribbon Tree. “Did you tie a ribbon for your mom?”

Preston frowns. “How – how’d you know about my mom?”

Justin glances back over his shoulder at him and smiles sadly. “I know a thing or two about losing your mom. It hurts a lot, but just know you’re never as alone as you think you are.”

Preston’s gaze falls to his sneakers, the blue muddied with grass. Tears sting his eyes. “Dad is so sad, he won’t even talk to me, or anyone. Just works all day long. I don’t… I don’t have any friends.”

“But you will,” Justin says insistently, and then he reaches behind Preston’s ear and plucks a blue coin out from behind it. “It’s like magic, you know? You just gotta believe in your heart that there are people out there who will love you. And they’re coming as fast as they can.”

“They are?”

Justin smiles at him. “Trust me, Prest-o, they are. And your mother will always be there for you. Just keep believing in magic, okay? And it’ll come true.”

Before Preston can figure out a response to this, Justin straightens up and then vanishes, the air where he had been standing shimmering blue for just a moment too long.

In his wake, Preston finds himself staring up at the Ribbon Tree, the colors swaying in the wind – red and blue and white and yellow and pink – and thinks about his mother, somewhere up there, beyond the tree and the skies, watching over him.

For the first time, he walks home from the park with a smile on his face.

.

**white.**

She kicks a stone into the river and watches it plop into the water with a sad sort of splash. The water that sprays up around it is more green-gray than the blue it should be, and there’s a plastic soda can that bobs to the top of the river as her stone sinks down and out of sight.

Hayley sighs and sits down heavily on the river bank, not even caring about the mud getting on her jeans. She’d been here every day for the past two weeks, trying to clean up the river, but no matter how many flyers her mothers put out, there were barely any takers. Some days, they had as many as seven. Today, there had been zero.

She picks up another stone and goes to throw it, but stops when a woman materializes in the path of the rock, seemingly out of thin air.

Hayley blinks, shakes her head. No, _definitely_ out of thin air.

“Need some help?” the woman asks, a smile on her face that makes her seem kind, and gentle. She has short, caramel-brown hair and warm brown skin, wearing a white dress and sneakers with what looked like tigers embroidered on the sides.

Hayley scrambles to her feet and takes several steps back from the lady. “Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”

The woman holds out a flyer: **COME HELP CLEAN UP THE RIVER – TODAY, 5:30PM** , over a photograph of the river as it had used to look, bright blue and beautiful and sparkling under the sun.

“Oh.” Hayley pauses, doubt creeping into her mind. Maybe the lady had just walked in from the side out of nowhere. That could happen. “So, you’re here to help clean up?”

“I would love to.” The woman smiles, tilting her head. “But I’m afraid I can’t stay long.”

Hayley blinks at her. “Why not?”

“Because I’m only here for you.” She offers Hayley the flyer. “My name’s Alyssa. I like to consider myself a friend of the environment. And of people like you.”

“People like me?” Hayley frowns. “What does that mean? I’m not special.”

“Oh, but you are,” Alyssa smiles. “You’ve got such a big heart, Hayley. I want you to promise me you’re not going to give up, no matter how hard it gets. That you’ll fight for the things you believe in, even if it seems like no one is fighting besides you.”

Hayley glances around at the otherwise empty river bank. “Are you telling me this because nobody’s going to show up to clean the river?”

“I’m telling you this because you have a lot of power, and a lot of determination, and all you need is to believe that you’re capable of doing anything you set your mind to – even if you have to do it alone.”

Alyssa reaches out and carefully folds the flyer up in Hayley’s hands, pressing it down into her palm. “I know it feels like nobody else cares. But I promise you, people do care. And some day, you’ll meet the people who care most of all. Hold on to them, okay?”

“But I can’t do it by myself,” Hayley says in a small voice, looking out past Alyssa and to the big, big river – too big for one girl to clean up all by herself.

“You won’t have to,” Alyssa promises her. “Just hold out for a little while.”

Hayley squints at her. “Did I halluciminate you?”

“Hallucinate?” Alyssa smiles at her. “Maybe. I prefer to think of it as a manifestation of what’s truly in your heart. You’ll understand what I mean one day.”

“When?” Hayley asks, but she isn’t even finished getting the word out before Alyssa disappears into the sunlight, like a mirage of a hopeless heart that she must have been.

With a sigh, Hayley leans down to pick up another rock, when she hears a different voice, this one male, and young, calling her name from just beyond the trees that flank the river.

“Hey, Hayley!” says Calvin, bouncing up to her with his big brother behind him and a scooper in his hands. “Is this where the clean-up is?”

Hayley stares at him, then smiles slowly. “Yeah. This is where the clean-up is.”

.

**yellow.**

He presses the button of the remote and watches the yellow car go whizzing around his feet, too fast to stop until it crashes into the wall. It makes a thump, then starts beeping uncontrollably, ramming itself into the wall over and over again.

Calvin frowns and presses the red _stop_ button. The toy car goes immediately still. He heaves a sigh and sits down on the front steps of his house, not even bothering to turn the car around from where it had landed next to the door and bring it back to him.

There was no point in playing with cars. He was never going to drive one, anyway.

He looks up to watch the sunset over Summer Cove, and finds himself staring at a woman instead of the sky. She smiles kindly at him, her blonde hair fluttering in the winds, wearing a shade of yellow that seems to match his car, somehow.

“Who are you?” Calvin asks, confused. He didn’t think his parents had been expecting anybody, and she looks too old to be one of his brother’s friends.

“Just a friend,” says the woman, walking over to his toy car and picking it up. “My name’s Lily. Is this yours?”

“Yeah,” Calvin says, watching in suspicion as she sits down in front of him, turning the car over in her palm as if she’s analyzing it. “Do you… want it?”

Lily glances up and smiles at him again. “Oh, no, I don’t. I was just thinking you should get a yellow car. You know, when you can.”

Calvin blinks at her. “What do you mean? I can’t drive. I…” He looks down, his stomach swooping with the memory of the go-kart incident. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to drive.”

“Hey,” Lily says gently, and when he looks back at her, she seems almost illusive for a moment, her skin shimmering in the air. “That’s just the fear talking. I know it seems scary right now, but it’s gonna get better.”

He squints. “How do you know that? Who are you? Are you real?”

Lily laughs and seems, in that moment, both real and not real at the same time. “Like I said, I’m a friend… a friend from the grid, you could say. I’m here because you seemed like you needed a friend. Am I wrong?”

Slowly, Calvin shakes his head. It _is_ nice to talk to someone instead of just staring morosely at his car. “But what’s the grid? Did I imagine you?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Lily says, her smile mysterious although her eyes are sparkling as she offers him his toy car back. “But that’s not important right now. You shouldn’t beat yourself up over one incident. It doesn’t mean you’ll never drive.”

Calvin looks down at the grass, not taking the car back. “But… I’m scared,” he mutters. “I can’t even get in Dad’s car anymore. I don’t want to drive.”

“But you love cars, right?” Lily prods. When he nods, she continues, “Then maybe you can focus on some other part of them for now. Like fixing them up, or painting them so they look pretty.”

Calvin stares at her, at her hand still extended with his car, patiently. “Fixing them up?” he repeats quietly.

“Yeah,” Lily says, and smiles. “You never know where you’ll find your passion. And courage comes in the most unexpected of ways. You’re braver than you think, Calvin.”

Slowly, he reaches out and takes the car from her hand, curling his fingers around it. “I am?”

“I know you are,” Lily tells him. She squeezes his hand, then stands up and smoothes down her yellow dress. “Maybe I’ll see you around one day again, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Calvin says, blinking up at her. “Wait, does that mean you’re real or just…?”

She’s gone before he’s finished his sentence. Later, he’ll swear she disappeared into thin air, and his brother will laugh and tell him she probably just walked around the corner when he wasn’t paying attention.

Calvin doesn’t think that’s true. But maybe it doesn’t matter. He looks down at his yellow toy car and smiles in her wake.

.

**pink.**

She flips over another page in her notebook, pen scrawling a continuation of her notes across the blank white page. The ideas are flowing so well, she almost doesn’t notice anything happening around her – until there’s a burst of laughter from the gaggle of kids standing just a few feet away, near the playground, and she looks up.

Quickly, at least half the group looks away, but some of them keep staring and giggling in her direction. Sarah frowns and looks back down at her notebook. Just because they didn’t understand what she was doing, scribbling ideas all the time, doesn’t mean they have to _laugh_ at her.

“Children are mean, huh?” says a voice next to her, and she nearly jumps. She looks over to see a woman – possibly a teacher, though not one she’s seen around the school before – standing next to her bench, dressed in black and pink, with short dark hair and a knowing smile when she looks over at Sarah.

“Believe me,” the woman continues, “I know how it feels.”

Sarah closes her notebook and holds it closer to her chest. “Are you a teacher?”

“I am, just not here,” the woman admits. She smiles at Sarah and adds, “I’m Rose. You seemed lonely, but if you want to be alone with your notebook, I can leave.”

“No,” Sarah says quickly. “I don’t – I don’t want to be alone.”

Rose’s smile looks a little sad. “Not many people do,” she agrees. “You know, you could probably go to college early with a brain like yours. That’s what I did, but I don’t think I would recommend it.”

Sarah glances at her in curiosity. “How come?”

Rose shrugs. “When you’re a kid… you should be a kid. No matter how smart you are. But it’s hard, being so different from everyone else. They don’t really understand you.”

“Yeah,” Sarah agrees, looking back at her classmates, who have now begun laughing at a video on someone’s phone instead of at her. It’s a mild improvement. “I _wanna_ be friends… but they don’t like me cuz I’m smart.”

“I’m sure that’s not it,” Rose says. “They just don’t know you. But some day… some day, you’ll meet people who _get_ you. Who’ll know you better than anyone else. Maybe even better than you know yourself.”

Sarah sets her notebook back down on her lap and stares at the calligraphy of her name she’s drawn all over it. “Is that what happened to you?”

Rose smiles, warmer and genuine. “Yeah, that’s what happened to me. It took a while, but… you’ll know when it happens. And believe me, it’ll happen. You’re meant for great things, Sarah. There are people out there who’ll know that as soon as they meet you.”

Sarah presses a hand to her cheek; it’s suddenly wet, for reasons she can’t fathom. “When will that happen to me?”

Rose kneels down so they’re eye level and holds her gaze. “I promise, it’ll happen one day. You just gotta go on being special, okay? You can do anything you put your mind to. Invent a flying skateboard. Train a monkey to shower. Whatever you want.”

Sarah laughs a little shakily. “How did you know I was working on a flying skateboard?”

Rose smiles back and taps her heart. “I’m here because you needed someone. You’ll understand one day. Until then, just promise me you won’t stop yourself for anyone.”

“I promise,” Sarah says solemnly. “Will I see you again?”

“Of course you will,” Rose says, straightening up with a smile. “The people who really matter will stay in your heart. And that’s where I’ll be, too.”

Sarah knows she doesn’t quite understand it yet, but she also knows that she will, one day, if she keeps working and figuring things out. There’s so much more of the world to make sense of, that when Rose waves goodbye and quietly disappears, she barely even questions it.

One day, she’ll understand what happened. One day, it’ll all make sense. Until then, she has problems to solve and inventions to plan.


End file.
